


Hidden In The Shadows

by PostApocolypticAlien



Category: The X-Files
Genre: 3am writings, Angst, Gen, Sein und Zeit, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 11:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18234284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostApocolypticAlien/pseuds/PostApocolypticAlien
Summary: Not wrote at 3am but close enough. I don't know how to feel about this one...Some parts I like, other parts are meh. I dunno. It's Scully's POV and I tried.





	Hidden In The Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Not wrote at 3am but close enough. I don't know how to feel about this one...Some parts I like, other parts are meh. I dunno. It's Scully's POV and I tried.

He falls against her. His entire weight colliding with her torso. It knocks her off balance slightly, almost has her falling out of her heels, but she manages to maintain her balance, clutching onto him. 

His body shakes against her, his sobs the only sound swallowing up the room as he cries and cries, tears soaking the front of her shirt.

She says nothing. She just allows him to cry, to let the grief pour out of him. Her hand tangles in his hair, shifting through the short strands; it’s the only source of comfort she can give, lost at what else to do, what more she can do, hoping it’s enough.

It’s painful to see him like this, at a complete rock bottom- nothing more to do than just cry. To just cry the pain away.

Her own tears silently fall- a contrast to his quaking sobs- not for the distant woman she’d barely knew but for him, for Mulder, who’s last living relative has faded away from him.

He has nobody to blame this time. No far-off aliens or men hidden in the shadows. It was suicide.

Self-inflicted, she’d discovered it herself.

She has no idea how long they stand there for in the dark and in the cold but eventually, his sobs subside, fall into a string of sniffles before no noise emits from him all together.

He may as well have fallen asleep against her.  
“Mulder,” Scully whispers into the darkness. His hum is the only affirmation that he’s still awake.

“Come on,” she says. “We need to get you to bed.”

He’s like a zombie against her, stumbling to his full height, unaware of anything that’s around him and focusing solely on her.

Her eyes fall down to their hands that had clasped together in their shuffle, watching as her thumb gently grazes back and forth against his.

She watches, mesmerised, for a few minutes before she slowly moves her eyes back up to him.

She gasps at the sight of his stare on her. Intense and eyes dark in what little light is found within the room. But it’s here that she notes how red his eyes are. How, beyond the intenseness, how tired he is.

She pulls her gaze away from his, letting her eyes fall back down to the laced hands and giving his hand a little pull.

He gets the message. Blinking a few times as she guides him into the bedroom, keeping tight hold of his hand the whole way, scared that if she lets go he’ll float away and she’ll lose him to the nothingness that stole the rest of his family.

She let’s go eventually, however, to pull back the covers on his bed; her mind blank and void of anything.  
It’s only when he’s tucked in, safe within the confines of the sheets does she turn away.

But his hand reaches out to her, grasping her wrists and pulling her back towards him.

“Where are you going?” he asks, eyes wide despite his tiredness and voice laced with worry.

“Bathroom,” she answers, a hint of a smile forming. She’s like a mother, caring for a sick child. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He nods and she pries his hands away, severing the connection.

Locked within the walls of the bathroom, she let’s out a much needed breath of carbon dioxide, allowing the day’s events, the last couple of hours, wash over her.

It had been a rough one. A missing child, a dead mother. Mulder’s persistent need to personalise the case.

And he was. Is. She stands by that still.

But she doesn’t blame him. At some point through this mess she stopped blaming him.

She leans against the sink, fingernails tapping against the white porcelain as she thinks, shutting her eyes and thinks about what the next few hours are going to entail.

What does he want from her?

He’s going to want her to stay, she knows that much. But what else? To hold? To kiss?

To fuck?

Her eyes slowly open at that possibility. Scanning the tiled wall and clear glass shelf as she finds herself staring back in the mirror, the question clear and the answer unknown.

How far would she go to comfort him? To save him from the swirling dark pit she’s known herself?

The answer is yes. 

Yes. She would.

At that, she pushes herself away from the sink, stumbling out of the bathroom and back into the darkness.

She finds him with his eyes closed, breath evened out. Despite the protests from her knees, she kneels on the carpet, hand reaching out and gently moving a strand of stray hair from his eyes.  
“What do you need?” she whispers so only he can hear, scared the shadows will take him away from her.

“You.”

.:.:.:.:.:.:.

She has no idea what time it is. Only that it’s early morning, light breaking through and birds chirping away outside the window.

She’s so tired.

Scully had lost count somewhere between the happenings of yesterday and now at how many hours she’d been awake for. Unable to sleep when her eyes wanted nothing more than to do so.

Against her, Mulder snores softly, arms locked around her waist. Even in sleep he can’t let go.

Her hand hadn’t stopped its movements in his hair for most of the night, gently caressing the back of his skull. It was a lifejacket. A crutch she’d kept going back to through the night, still hoping that it was enough.

At some point there’s a knock on the front door. She regrettably worms her way out of Mulder’s stronghold on her to answer it.  
And later, they’re back in action. On a flight back to California. The events of their shared night tucked away into the shadows of a darkened apartment.


End file.
